Kepler

[Stoned]

http://dvice.com/archives/2011/02/kepler-spots-fi.php#5

mfw when he mentions Kepler 11:

 

[jon50559]

Sometimes these NASA projects aimed at finding life get me angry, why narrow your search so much that you'll maybe never find a right match?! I mean, sure, maybe they wish to find Earth-like alien life, but what're the real chances of that? We have some radical environments here on Earth in which life flourishes, even without sunlight or water. [/rant I guess]

 

[Stoned]

THe reason as to why it is so awesome for me is the thought that we could live and explore on another planet

 

[jon50559]

A planet that's probably hundreds of light years+ away?

 

[littleaznboi]

A planet that's probably hundreds of light years+ away?

thousands, millions, billions, even trillions!!! D:

 

[The Man In Black]

Save the research until we have the technology to reasonably get humans there. Who cares if there's a planet two thousand light years away that may be Earth-like? We have no chance of getting to it right now, or maybe ever. The research may be neat, but it's impractical. I'd rather have the millions spent elsewhere, like cancer research and the whatnot.

 

[Thothie]

Meh, we're not gonna cure cancer, not while there's so much profit to be made from treating it.

Plus I'm not sure how much we should be concerned about how far away the planet is, when we apparently don't even know how gravity works. Hadron collider has yet to find that mysterious particle that's supposed to make up 90% of the universe that's required to make our current theories pan out. Suffice to say there are some glaring holes in our fundamental view of the rules of the universe (some large enough to point to the need to start over from scratch).

Given how many billions we toss into black holes of needless destruction (not to mention the trillions we generate out of thin air), a few million for a telescope like this is a solid investment by comparison, if for no other reason that it might inspire something critically constructive, and closer to home, down the road.

Granted, we'll need some sort of pending global extinction event that no one can deny the existence of, in order to ever act on that knowledge. ...or maybe discover a planet full of unobtainium orbiting Jupiter.

 

[littleaznboi]

Actually there's this girl that goes to my high school that's on the verge of finding a solution, maybe even a cure for cancer. It was a science project now turned actual scientific research. Here's a part from an article about it,
" Amy's research to develop a photosensitizer for photo dynamic therapy (PDT), an emerging cancer treatment that uses light energy to activate a drug that kills cancer, earned her a $75,000 Gordon E. Moore Award, awarded for the first time in 2010 in honor of the Intel co-founder and retired chairman and CEO. Her research earned first place at the world's largest pre-college science competition, the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, this year."
She has met with Obama 3 times and sat next to his wife at the State of the Union Address.

 

[Thothie]

If I had a nickel for every time I read an article where someone cured cancer, I could keep Gabe Newell full of babies for life.

I should rephrase: we're never going to distribute a cure for cancer, so long as it's so profitable to treat. I'm sure we've actually cured it a few thousand times by now... Ditto for AIDS and diabetes, and a thousand other chronic diseases/conditions.

I know, I'm a buzz kill.

 

[littleaznboi]

D:

 

[The Man In Black]

Wikileak the cure! >_> I'm not saying NASA is the only money waster I'd cut, but it was the topic at hand. And why should we not worry about how far it is? We're clearly not looking for planets in general, as we're looking for Earth-like ones. Either they're looking for aliens, and sticking to ones that are more likely to be approachable by us, or we're looking for a new place to inhabit and destroy. Either way, it's not going to be particularly exciting to me unless we actually have a feasible way to reach the planet. Who cares that we could live elsewhere when we can't live through the journey to get there? And who cares if the trip is possible when our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren won't even be alive to see it?

 

[Thothie]

Because, as a species, it's our purpose.

We're the only creatures to evolve on this planet with the potential to leave its bounds and spread amongst the stars, and if we fail in that purpose, this planet doesn't have enough years left in it to evolve another one to continue its legacy - meaning the billions of years of life on this planet will have been all for nothing. Sure, there's the fact that the sun is going to inflate madly and kill everything in here in 5 billion years or so, and you'd be right to say that isn't something to worry about - but there's a great number of other cosmological phenomenon that are neigh infinitely more likely to wipe us out before then. There's 39 giant stars large enough and close enough to us that, if any one of them went nova (and they all eventually will - long before our sun will die), the resulting X-rays would wipe out all life in the solar system, and we don't know enough about the details of that process to know which one might blow up when - just enough to know that some of them have disturbingly high helium contents. There's a dozen pulsars close enough that if they flipped in the wrong direction, as they do every so often, that the x-ray streams from such bodies could cross our solar system and wipe out everything here. Then there's a huge number of asteroids large enough to cause global extinction crossing our orbit periodically, and many more we've likely yet to detect, and more flying in every so often from the distant ort cloud that surrounds the system, and even a few we do know of, that will cross disturbingly close, even in the next few decades.

As a nation, we're only ones really capable of carrying out that ultimate life-preserving agenda. NASA's annual budget is less than $10 billion dollars, the lowest it's been, as a percentage of the annual budget, since its inception. Nearly 75% of the rest of that that 3.6 trillion dollar budget goes to war, meaning it is spent on things that not only encourage us to concentrate on our comparatively trivial international struggles, to the exclusion of all else, but create even more potential scenarios for global extinction, but by our own hands. Thankfully, some small portion of that goes to Star Wars or rocketry innovations, which at least help enhance space fairing technology, but if we ever have a real orbital conflict, the resulting sheet of spinning debris that'll be surrounding the planet and orbiting at tens of thousands of miles per hour, will render leaving orbit impossible - in the long run, ultimately dooming us all.

That little telescope shows it can be done, that there is hope, and that hope, that focus on what's truly important, something so important to ignore it renders all other activities meaningless, is worth more to mankind than the entire national budget combined. At a cost of roughly 170million per year of NASA's budget for 3.5 years, that's a damned good bargain.

 

[Tentadrilus]

I was under the impression that only stars within ~10LY were capable of ruining life on Earth - the star needs to be close enough able to wipe away our magnetosphere before any damage can be done.

 

[Thothie]

There's debate, but some theories hold that any supernova within 1000ly would be lethal, and any within 20,000ly would be potentially lethal. The actual explosions vary in size immensely, as does the shape and path of the radiation released, due the various gravitational eddies, gasses, and matter.

Betelgeuse is ~400ly away. It has been contracting at roughly 700 miles per hour for the past 20 years, meaning it is already collapsing. When it explodes, it'll be a type II super-nova, spewing out radiation for over 1000 light years, potentially creating solar winds strong enough to not only rip off our magnetosphere, but a good deal of our atmosphere, and a substantial proportion of even our own sun's outer shell - though the resulting gamma radiation alone will deplete our ozone layer completely years before that. Mind you, because of the distance involved, we're seeing Betelgeuse ~400 years in the past. It may have already exploded. By the time we can see it exploding, it'll be too late.

Betelgeuse is the largest star in the area, but it isn't nearly the closest, nor the only one large enough to go supernova, nor the only one showing signs of collapse, nor the biggest potential explosion in the area. There are smaller, but denser stars, closer by, capable of even larger novas, and other SDSO's bound to collide with unknown repercussions (forming either new black holes, supernovas, or, under some theories, possibly even quasars).

Not that there aren't already a million other things that could go wrong - and even those are only the ones we're aware can happen. There's new theories for planetary destruction events we never conceived of before cropping up every day - and the majority of the ones we do know about, we've only become aware of within the past 200 years. There's also at least two global extinction events in the geological record that we've no solid answer as to what caused them. As such, odds are we've only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of potential planetary dangers, and even those few we have seen make it seem miraculous the planet's survived as long as it has.

The frailty of life is the universe's way of saying "get your head out of your ass or die".

Meanwhile... I'm going to keep compiling this MSC cult video-game mod... >_>;

 

[The Man In Black]

Our purpose may be to find someplace to spread to in the event that something happens to Earth, but that does not translate to staring through telescopes saying, "Ooh, that'd be a nice one!" If you really think that NASA purpose is to get us off this planet to save humanity, then shouldn't they being more practical/realistic? Maybe we should have the technology to get to these planets before we look for them? Hell, I'm sure by the time we develop the technology to reach foreign solar systems we'll probably have the technology to find planets a lot easier.

Besides, if our purpose is to survive then why are we spending so much on (currently) fruitless attempts to die en route to a new planet and wars to kill each other rather than research on how to cure ourselves?

 

[Thothie]

Our purpose may be to find someplace to spread to in the event that something happens to Earth, but that does not translate to staring through telescopes saying, "Ooh, that'd be a nice one!" If you really think that NASA purpose is to get us off this planet to save humanity, then shouldn't they being more practical/realistic? Maybe we should have the technology to get to these planets before we look for them? Hell, I'm sure by the time we develop the technology to reach foreign solar systems we'll probably have the technology to find planets a lot easier.

Besides, if our purpose is to survive then why are we spending so much on (currently) fruitless attempts to die en route to a new planet and wars to kill each other rather than research on how to cure ourselves?

NASA is on a shoestring budget. The international space station is done with, and Bush killed the space shuttle program (and Obama made no effort to reverse said). Thus, the only thing they can hope to do, for now, is fantasy advertising PR projects, in hopes that they can inspire future generations, dreamers, to fund them. You simply can't make any practical or realistic strides to such a goal on that budget, but you can inspire and plan baby steps, and if you don't, anything else you might choose to do instead is, in the end, meaningless.

Even if we lived in a benign civilization that'd cure profitable diseases, instead of the dog-eat-dog world that both physical and societal evolution has given us, what good would blowing another few hundred million on cancer research do? There's over 7 billion of us on the planet now FFS! >< Do you wanna make that situation worse, have more wars over resources, or take steps towards all those lives amounting to something? Besides, it's not as if cancer research is underfunded. The National Cancer Institute alone got $4.97 Billion in 2009 (+$1.6 Billion of ARRA money) - and they don't have to build rockets (WTF does that money go!? ><). That's not counting the estimated $20 billion that goes to cancer research annually through charities in this country alone (and you can likely guess where that money goes). Combine that with all the other chronic disease research funds, both governmental and charity, and you're looking at a disease research effort several hundred times the size of NASA's measly budget. (And in many ways, that money is hurting more than helping, as a cure would make it all vanish, never mind the industry.)

Granted, you may wish to pull the "It's not enough to survive, you have to be worthy of survival" card, but I think we're already well beyond failing on that point. The money would, of course, be better invested in fixing those core issues, and they are the ones holding us back, however, you can't fix those sort of flaws in human nature with money - indeed, you can only make them worse. Sadly, as a result of those flaws encouraging our myopic vision, we are rapidly moving backwards, in terms of progress that might see us moving forward, and our odds of survival, and thus of the all the world's survival, look bleak indeed.

 

[Tentadrilus]

The only theory I've heard is that Betelgeuse will do sod all to us, bar perhaps giving us a week's worth of day sometime during 2012. Stars within 1000ly have exploded before and we're still here, so...

 

[Thothie]

The closest observed supernova (Supernova 1987A) was over 168,000ly away - and oddly enough, that one cropped out of a star that wasn't supposed to be large enough to go nova, yet made quite a bang. The closest in known history (now SN 1054 and the Crab Nebula, then OMGWTF) was 6,300ly away, and that was a tiny one, yet it not only remains visible to this day, but still affects us. The radiation from that event still makes up nearly 20% of the background radiation in our solar system - nearly 1000 years after the fact. Betelgeuse is expected to make a much, much larger nova than that one, and is only 400ly away. There've been some Type 1a nova explosions over the years - which result from white dwarfs, and are much smaller and more consistent, though even with those, there's at least one feeding dwarf close enough to cause concern. Stars large enough to create supernova have a lifespan of 1/1000th of our own sun, so Type II explosions are actually much more common. We've just been lucky... ...Or maybe not... One of the prevailing theories for culprits regarding Ordovician–Silurian global extinction event (in which 60% of everything up and died some 443 million years ago) is a supernova, more than 6,000ly away, gamma-radiating the ozone layer.

But, again, given all the other things that could wipe us out sometime soon, I wouldn't even put that in the top 10 of pending potential global extinction events. Point is, eggs all in one basket, bad, and it should be our top priority as a space-fairing civilization to remedy that state. Instead we move more and more inward, and become less and less capable of saving ourselves. We don’t even have the technology to land on the moon anymore, and it only looks as though things are going to get worse in that regards as our collective delusions become increasingly the only reality we can perceive.

 

[Tentadrilus]

It's estimated that a Type II supernova (which is what Betelgeuse will supposedly asplode into) would have to be ~26 lightyears away in order to blow away half of the Earth's atmosphere. So, on paper, we're fine!

I think our luck may be running out - it's a miracle we managed to get anything off the planet in the first place, really. Not really our problem though, eh?

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

Save the research until we have the technology to reasonably get humans there. Who cares if there's a planet two thousand light years away that may be Earth-like? We have no chance of getting to it right now, or maybe ever. The research may be neat, but it's impractical. I'd rather have the millions spent elsewhere, like cancer research and the whatnot.

At least the money is being spent on some form of scientific research and not on something completely useless, like religion. Exploration of space or cancer research, it's all good in my book.

I'm not saying NASA is the only money waster I'd cut

Holy shit you just called NASA a money waster :|

 

[Thothie]

It's estimated that a Type II supernova (which is what Betelgeuse will supposedly asplode into) would have to be ~26 lightyears away in order to blow away half of the Earth's atmosphere. So, on paper, we're fine!

I think our luck may be running out - it's a miracle we managed to get anything off the planet in the first place, really. Not really our problem though, eh?

The lighted matter in the Crab Nebula is 10 light years across. The physical gas spread is over 100 light years across. The radiation, 1000 years after the fact, is still flooding our solar system (and gods knows what it was doing during the two years the explosion was visible, brighter than the moon, back in medieval times). All that, from 6,300 light years away, and from a supernova that was between 20 and 50 times smaller than the one Betelgeuse is supposed to create, and Betelgeuse, is 15 times closer. So I somehow think we're talking more than 26ly. Also doesn't need to strip our atmosphere - just hit us with enough gamma radiation to form enough NO2 in the ozone layer to neutralize it - then our own sun does the rest of the work.

But yeah, the "not our problem" is kinda why we are where we are - less capable of space travel than we were some 60 years ago. Folks rarely think more than a generation in advance, if that, these days.


(Except dwarfs explode too. ><)

At least the money is being spent on some form of scientific research and not on something completely useless, like religion. Exploration of space or cancer research, it's all good in my book.

The Catholic church funds a lot of astronomical research, oddly enough. It's sad to think, however, that while religion could be such a uniting force in such an effort, the underlying wisdom of the current Jedeo-Christian religions is that, if God wants to wipe us all out in some cataclysmic event, then we shouldn't fight His will. :\ (So much for the parable of Noah.)

 

[Tentadrilus]

I think you misunderstand - if Betelgeuse was truly a threat to us, then the populace would know about it. They don't.

In order to have any effect on our biosphere, NASA say that a star would have to explode within 100 LY of us (that is their definition of a "Near-Earth supernova" - a supernova capable of negatively affecting Earth). Betelgeuse is not within 100 LY. We're fine, calm down, go home.

 

[Thothie]

*sigh* The populace does know about it, insomuch as the know about the thousands of others of potential disasters - hell Discovery channel does a special on them every now and again, and we were talking about Betelgeuse exploding when I was in elementary school - which was before it started contracting. There's just nothing we can do about most of them, so no one makes a fuss. The few potential extinction events we can do something about, people deny they exist, cuz it'd cost money or jeopardize political power to fix them.

Think people would actually need to see a giant meteor in the sky, or a huge explosion before they'd do anything, and by the time you can see something like that, it be too late. Even then, I'm not so sure we'd do anything - I mean folks can set their drinking water on fire in areas spotting a third of the states, and I don't see much of a movement to stop that while its so profitable. I really think most folks know the world can end at any moment, assume they can do nothing to stop it, and just wanna get as much out of life while they can.

Which, admittedly, was kind of the attitude my generation had, during the peak of the cold war, when we coulda ended the world at any moment (and nearly did on more than one occasion) - that defeatist attitude just never went away for some reason. Probably because it's just so convenient.

 

[Tentadrilus]

Betelgeuse has only been getting media attention over the past month or so. Queensland (the university that's been following it for however long) have not said that it will affect us, they just nonchalantly said that we might have two suns for a week or two in 2012. You're making a mountain out of a molehill.

 

[Thothie]

I've actually not seen nor heard anything on Betelgeuse itself in the media in decades. It wasn't even in the mainstream news when it started contracting more than 20 years ago. We briefly covered it in our elementary school astronomy subjects, as part of learning the life cycles of stars.

I thought your 2012 thing was some sort of Mayan prophecy joke, but IIRC, it was contracting at 700mph when I last heard something on the subject decades ago, and they were saying, at that rate, it'd take hundreds of years to actually contract enough to explode - but they didn't know enough of the details to know at what rate the contraction might accelerate.

From what I've read, a supernova in 100ly would not only kill us, but blow our whole solar system to pieces, scattering it to the winds. All the stellar masses within 100ly of the Crab nebula's center are torn to shreds - that's what all that gas is from - not from the star itself - but displaced matter from the surrounding stars and systems, and that was a weak supernova by comparison - and the Crab nebula is tiny as such swaths of supernova related destruction go. It is true, theories vary wildly, but the visual evidence is there for that much... And again, Betelgeuse isn't even the nastiest potential explodie thing in the area, nor are nearby explodie things even the most likely thing to take us out in the near future.